


Tending Your Roses

by Lady_Therion



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Bath Sex, F/M, Fluff and Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 13:46:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15292836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Therion/pseuds/Lady_Therion
Summary: Azriel attends his lady.





	Tending Your Roses

Her roses were doing well.

Elain noted this with relish, marking down her progress in a little journal she carried with her into the garden. Fae roses were, by nature, much wilder than their human counterparts. Left to their own devices, they grew unruly—even savage. She had several beds of one such rose called Maiden’s Blood. Their thorns were so deadly that assassins often harvested them for poison. But if tended in a slightly different climate, healers could harvest them for elixirs. If Elain’s hypothesis was correct, their chimeric properties could also be transmuted into a more effective antidote for faebane. It was still too early to tell, however...

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Elain smiled as her lover’s arms wound themselves around her waist.

“Where else would I be?”

Azriel pressed a kiss to the bare skin of her shoulder, then another along her neck.

“You could be with me,” he said, resting his chin in the crook of her shoulder. “Inside, preferably...where there’s a bed.” He tugged her closer. “Our bed.”

The heat Elain felt had nothing to do with the weather.

“I hate it when you do that.”

“Do what?”

She pouted. “Make me blush like an idiot.”

“Why?” He asked, all innocence. “ _I_ happen to like it and you don’t look like an idiot.” His scarred fingers made her arch as he skimmed the curves of her bodice. “Your skin gets red here and here, like your roses.” His calloused thumb glided over her collarbones, the rise of her bosom. “It makes your freckles stand out.” His voice was a soft, velvet growl. “I want to taste each one.”

“Stop,” she said (or rather gasped). Turning in his arms, she distracted him a kiss—which was the aim of his purpose all along. The scoundrel. Her shadowsinger simply couldn’t resist teasing her. And in her own garden, no less! “You can be so wicked,” she said, nipping his bottom lip in a way that made his hazel eyes darken. “ _Worse_ than Cassian. At least wait until we get into the house. It’s not _proper_.”

His face was impassive. To a stranger, he would seem cold...unfathomable. Sometimes, he still was. But Elain had learned to read him better over the years; had learned to see his tells—the pauses in his breath, the tightness in his shoulders—that said all that she needed to know.

At this moment, she detected a slight twitch in his mouth that told her he amused. Amused at _her_ expense. He also made no promises for propriety and resumed their kiss...which was deep...and penetrating.  
  
It was silly, she knew. How light-headed and giddy he could make her feel, even after all this time. He had taken that time to learn her body well, and was now quick to discern her wants and needs. Illyrians, she discovered, were protective and overbearing by nature. Indulging their lovers was simply a matter of course. And though Azriel’s relationship with his heritage was complicated, he was nothing if not thorough when it came to pleasing her.

 _Quite_ thorough, indeed.

“Shall we?”

She nodded. Then stood on her toes and kissed him again.

* * *

Azriel scanned her from head to toe. Her gown was covered in soil and grass stains, the hem drenched from watering. To be fair, Elain often appeared in worse states. Her work in the garden was arduous and demanding, often occupying her from dawn to dusk—and sometimes even later if Azriel didn’t coax her inside as he did now.

“You’re filthy,” he said.

She placed her hands on her hips. “Are you scolding me?”

“No,” he said. “I’m admiring you.”

Again, that embarrassing heat spread through her.

“Let me draw you a bath,” he said, reaching for her.

“Only if you join me.”

She interlaced their fingers, tracing the ridges of his scars. Sometimes he flinched when she did so and it grieved her that the pain from his past could run so deep. But he didn’t flinch now. Instead he looked at her with...something tender, something like shyness. Something only she would ever see.

If she listened closely, she could hear the whisper of his shadows, as well as the songs they sang. They coiled around him—and her—like tendrils of smoke. Right now, they chanted her name in the sweetest of harmonies. _Elain, Elain, Elain_. Their music was joyful. At ease. Had her love, her darling, ever felt so at peace?

“Not until you,” he said, reading her thoughts.

He leaned in to kiss the shell of her ear. Then traced it with his tongue...

Her eyes shuttered before she gently pushed him away. “Go,” she said. “Run the bath before you debauche me in our own foyer.”

“Would that be so terrible?”

No, it wouldn’t be terrible. And because it wouldn’t be the first time he ravished her there, she knew that with _certainty_. But she wrinkled her nose at him anyway before dancing out of his grasp.

“Draw the bath,” she said again. “Or I won’t let you join me at all.”

* * *

It was well enough that Elain and Azriel had a home of their own.

Theirs was far from the city; a humble cottage tucked away in the greenest and most verdant of hills. She loved it here. The fresh, open air. The starlit nights. The sunny afternoons. It was a place where she could lay down roots of her own; a place where she could thrive.

Somehow, Azriel had known it—had known that she could blossom here, well before she did.

The water was already steaming by the time she reached the back of the cottage where the tub was. It was a large structure, almost as deep as a spring and big enough to accomodate two. Even if one of those occupants had wings. The _largest_ set of wings, to her knowledge.

She expected Azriel to be soaking already. But there he was. Still dressed in his tunic and breeches while she stood there in a bathrobe as thin as spider silk.

“Let me,” he said, pulling at the end of her sash.

He drew her close enough to press his forehead against hers. His movements were deliberate... _sensual_. Elain cherished it all. How careful he was as he undid the knot at the center. How the tips of his fingers raised the gooseflesh on her skin as he unraveled the gossamer material. He unraveled her slowly, drinking in the sight of her body. A body which was rapidly responding to his light and clever touches, ever eager and hungry for more.

The robe slipped into a pool at her feet, but Azriel was far from done.

She adored seeing him like this: so utterly fixated, so utterly consumed.

“ _I don’t do things by halves_ ,” he once confessed.

He liked to savor things gradually, with intent. As a child, he never knew what new cruelties awaited him. So he learned to treasure the lapses, the respites, the few good moments he had. He learned to make them last.

He also learned to be patient, which suited Elain very much. But there were times when she wanted to loosen his leash, if just a little. Times when his attentive strokes would incite a fever, an ache. Like now, as he caressed the fullness of her breasts, making the tips peak and pebble with attention.

“Look at you,” he murmured. “Red all over.”

“Azriel,” she whispered, a chord of longing in her voice. “Azriel…”

“Just one taste,” he said. Then he leaned down to take a rosy nipple in his mouth and sucked before she could protest.

But she didn’t protest. She encouraged him. Needy little mewls of “yes” and “please” as he circled tighter and tighter with his tongue. The ghost of his fingers traveled down, down, _down_ to tease the pulsing heat between her legs.

“So sweet,” he said, latching himself to her other breast. “I need more.”

“So greedy,” she said, feeling him smile. A real smile. “But then...so am I.”

“Elain…”

Somehow, she managed to twist away from him. The shadows sprang for her in a frenzied outcry.

_Wait. Wait. Wait._

_Come back. Come here._

_Mine, mine, mine._

“Get in,” she said, dipping herself into the heat of the tub. “Before the water gets cold.”

She blinked twice before she felt the weight of Azriel behind her. It still astonished her. How fast he could move. There one second and gone the next. But now he was seated underneath her, solid and warm and oh so deliciously naked. She would feel the hard plains of him, the classically elegant lines, the muscles that rippled around her as he pulled her into his lap. Her back to his chest.

The water sloshed over the lip of the tub. But neither she or Azriel paid any mind to it as he spread her legs wide beneath the clear water. He traced every dip and hollow. His scarred hands flowing down from the tops of her knees all the way down to the center, cupping the bud between her thighs.

She writhed against him, scrambling to find purchase by grasping his wrist as he drove a finger inside her. Then another. And another. It shocked and stunned her. Made her clench and flutter around his hand. She felt slick and wanton and so wonderfully obscene. Taking her pleasure without restraint. Growing tighter as he plunged deeper and deeper.

“Ask me,” he said, biting down on her neck. She reveled in the sensation. The sharpness of his teeth and the unrelenting rhythm of his fingers. “Ask me, please.”

He always wanted to be asked. Though Elain never fully understood why. Could he not scent her desire for him? Could he not know? Perhaps he was more starved for intimacy than she realized, despite the lovers he had over the centuries. That he needed to hear her beg; needed to hear how much _she_ needed him made her heart shatter.

“Azriel...please...inside me...”

She could hardly speak, but he needed no further preamble. One by one, he removed his fingers, coaxing her down from her precipice. She felt their absence keenly, and spread her legs wider; an unspoken wish to be filled in other ways.

He obliged her. She had felt him all the while. Rock hard and jutting behind her. Even as crazed and aroused as they were, he took his time. He reached below the water to grab his length, pulling at it once and twice before questing for her entrance. She shivered as she felt his head. Her core throbbing as he eased in the tip.

“Is this enough?”

He knew it wasn’t. But still, he wanted to hear her say it.

“You’ll never be enough,” she said, then gasped as he thrusted himself to the hilt.

In and out. In and out. Over and over and over. The water rippled all around them, growing cooler even though their passion seared their very souls. They were a tangle of slick skin, hoarse cries, and messy kisses. It gave Elain no small amount of satisfaction to hear his ragged moans, which weren’t any quieter than hers—just lower pitched. Every time she met him thrust for thrust, every time she felt his cock twitch and spasm within her, was the sweetest and most agonizing of victories.

Finally, she could feel him falter. His grasp around her tightened as he reached that final crest. It wasn’t often that he peaked before her. She would have to remember this moment. The urgent way he sank into her, his near pained expression as he came. And her shadowsinger came so beautifully...

“Let go, my love,” she urged. “Let go.”

And he did. His hot release flooding her as she followed after him. The bliss of it was blinding, holding the both of them in thrall until they collapsed against one another. Relief washed over them as they nuzzled and soothed away the pleasurable aftershocks.

Time flowed once more when Elain decided that she was still not quite clean enough.

“I think you missed a spot,” she said.

A dry smirk. “Is that so?”

She leaned up to capture his lips. Her kiss burning and true as the shadows curled around them in ecstatic rhapsody. “I’m afraid you’ll have to try again.”

“Well then,” he said, turning her face him so that she sat astride his lap. “As my lady wishes.”


End file.
